A row over land takes Italy back to the Middle Ages

TROUBLE HAS been brewed on Mount Circeo, south of Rome, ever since it was home to Circe, a legendary sorceress who turned Odysseus’s shipmates into pigs. The latest tribulation arrived in envelopes that plopped onto doormats in and around the modern town of San Felice Circeo in recent weeks, and demanded that the occupants stump up five years’ back payments of a levy some had no idea they owed. The demands are the latest twist in a dispute with its origins in the Middle Ages.Several years ago, says their lawyer, Bianca Maria Menichelli, the heirs of Baron Giovanpaolo James Aguet got together to delegate one of their number to register what they say is their right to ownership of the land in the area. Their claim is based on possession of a fief—a right granted by a feudal overlord in exchange for allegiance or services. In this case, the overlord was a pope. Not even Ms Menichelli knows which one, though she says a document shows the arrangement was already in place by the 13th century.